Space Pictures | Universe Today

Written by Fraser Cain

Here are some great space pictures:

This is a picture of the planetary nebula NGC 2818 captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. What we're seeing is the outer layers of a dying star being puffed out into space.

Here's another space picture taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. This is a star forming region R136 in the 30 Doradus Nebula. There will eventually be thousands of new stars formed from this material, including some monsters with dozens of times the mass of the Sun.

Here's an image of Saturn captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. It shows the beautiful rings tilted towards the Sun.

An Oblique View of Victoria Crater. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

This is an image of Victoria Crater on the surface of Mars. This was the crater explored by NASA's Opportunity Rover.

Okay, that's fine, you've seen some pretty space pictures. Now, where can you get pictures like this for your own?

My favorite source of pictures is NASA, of course. And probably the best place to start is with the Hubble Space Telescope. You can access their current releases here, or a nice archive of the best pictures they've ever taken. You can also access pictures from the other great observatories: Chandra and Spitzer.

If you want to see pictures of other worlds, check out the home pages for each of the space missions. Start with SOHO for the Sun, Mercury MESSENGER, Venus Express, Mars Exploration missions, Cassini, New Horizons, and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter for the Moon.

If you'd like pictures of Earth from space, check out NASA's Earth Observatory, and the Visible Earth. And here's a link to NASA's Gateway to Astronaut Photography.

And finally, if you'd just like a grab bag of random pictures of space, check out the Astronomy Picture of the Day, and NASA's Image of the Day.

We've written many articles about space pictures for Universe Today. Here's a story about pictures of Earth from Space, and here are some great space shuttle pictures.

We've also recorded many episodes of Astronomy Cast about space. Here's a good one, Episode 41: The Rise of the Supertelescopes.

Filed under: Astronomy